Our heroes are cornered or trapped by one scary thing or group, only to be saved by another, bigger, scarier thing or group. Sometimes the "savior" has been introduced earlier in the plot, making this an instance of Chekhov's Gunman.

If the "savior" was previously the main antagonist, this may set up an unusual reaction in the viewer, who notes how his feelings about that antagonist are changed in this scene. The characters may notice the same; they may say, "I never thought I'd be so happy to see you!".

A McDonald's ad shows a kid using french fries as bait while fishing. Soon a fish bites...and a bigger one...and an even bigger one...which ends with a long chain of fish, ending with a huge sperm whale.

In Overlord, the protagonist himself, Ainz Ooal Gown, is the bigger fish. As the former leader of one of the most powerful guilds in Yggdrasil before being transported to the New World, he is easily able to brush off even the most powerful of this world's monsters without so much as wasting a breath.

In Monster, Nina is saved from Professor Geidlitz by Johan. What makes this better is that they were using her as bait to lure Johan in to convince him to lead their group and make "the master race" dominant once again, seeing him as the next Hitler. Anna tried to warn them that Johan didn't care about their cause or any cause. They discover too late that she's correct.

Used to great effect during the Batman Cold Open of the One Piece movie Strong World. Luffy is pursued by a giant alligator, which is defeated by a Forest Octopus, which is in turn defeated by a giant preying mantis, which is itself defeated by a gorilla-bear, only to have that thing finished off by Luffy himself once he gets sick of this. This is inverted with the giant shark from said opening, who is devoured by a group of ravenous ant warriors.

Also happens in the manga. One example being after the Fishman Island arc, where a fish the crew catches is then eaten by a bigger fish, which is eaten by an even bigger fish, which is then killed by Zoro.

A heroic variant in the Rurouni Kenshin episode, "Birth of a Child Swordsman": Yahiko is being chased by the gang of thugs he's been dealing with the entire episode. He leads them into an narrow alleyway where he can fight them one-on-one, but the thugs wise up and approach en masse, knives drawn. Then the thugs look up and notice Kenshin and Sanosuke on the wall behind Yahiko (either of whom would've been enough to make the thugs pause). Most of the thugs flee, but the leader wants to settle the score with Yahiko. He ends up giving Yahiko his first victory in a real fight.

In the finale Kriemhild Gretchen is defeated by Madoka via a Wishplosion.

And then the even more sinister version with Homura Akemi in Puella Magi Madoka Magica the Movie: Rebellion, when they Summon Bigger Fish using the forces of two witches and most of the Puella Magi at their best to defeat Kyubey... Only for Homura to turn out to be even more powerful than everyone, and she promptly seals the power of both Kyubey and Madoka...

Dragon Ball: Freeza and his even stronger father are coming. This could mean the end of all life on Earth. As soon as they arrive, a person we've never seen before shows up and cuts them both in half with a sword.

Done very extensively with the gods of the setting. Kami is God? Actually, he's just the god of Earth. King Kai? Actually, he's just one of four guardians of the universe, with the Grand Kai above him. And the Grand Kai has the Supreme Kais above him, though that reveal came pretty soon after the Grand Kai was revealed. And then in Dragon Ball Super we learn that above even the Supreme Kais is the King of Everything.

Extremely prominent in Toriko, where high level predatory monsters will be dined upon by even higher level ones. Case in point, recently when the Four Beasts awoke from their centuries old slumber to invade the human world, one of them killed a Regal Mammoth with one attack. In earlier chapters, said Regal Mammoth was probably the largest creature seen in the series so far (being approximately one kilometer in height), and had the ability to inhale hundreds of smaller beasts through one of its two trunks and spitting bones out the other.

In the Pokémon episode "Attack of the Prehistoric Pokemon", Ash, Pikachu, and Team Rocket are stuck underground with some recently-awoken and very grumpy Omanytes, Omastars, Kabuto, and Kabutops. After some back-and-forth battling, the ancient Pokemon have them on the ropes when they suddenly look around in a panic and flee. Ash wonders why they're running. CueAerodactyl.

In Gate, the heroes see a dragon in the distance moving towards them, when it is suddenly devoured by a much larger one, which then attacks them.

Comics

The climax of Bone is an interesting double-helping of this trope: the dragon-goddess Mim's roaring rampage is set to wipe most of the heroes (most of the planet) off the map. Meanwhile, Thorn and Fone Bone are being pursued by the rest of the dragons, in a blind rage. The dragons pursue Thorn and Fone to the surface, at which point they see Mim, and they break off their pursuit to go calm their queen down.

In an early Sunday strip of Calvin and Hobbes, Calvin shrinks down suddenly to the size of a bug from the perspective of other bugs. A fly tries to step on him until a frog eats it.

One Sherman's Lagoon comic has a progression of Bigger Fish eating each other. When Sherman, a Great White Shark, shows up to eat the third, another fish protests, "You're going out of turn. I eat that guy, then you eat me."

Occurs in Nth Man: The Ultimate Ninja when Reality Warper Alfie O'Meagan is waiting for a cosmic being called M'Gubgub. He barely avoids being stepped on by a massive alien who dwarfs the planet and proceeds to praise M'Gubgub... only for the alien to run away in a panic, as the galaxy-dwarfing M'Gubgub arrives.

In one Doctor Strange story arc, Strange is menaced by the cosmically powerful sorceress Umar. He finds and releases an artificial Eldritch Abomination called Zom which is the one thing that scares her. Needless to say this quickly backfires (if Strange couldn't handle Umar, he has no chance of containing something bigger than her), and he has to find a bigger fish yet, going through a chain of deals which ends with the Living Tribunal, the single biggest fish in the entire Marvel Multiverse (apart from an unseen, vaguely-defined "One-Above-All"). The Tribunal himself was defeated in the leadup to Infinity. It seems this was done by the mysterious 'Rabum Alal' - Sumerian (yes, really) for "Great Destroyer" - as Black Swan, kind of his herald in a sense, calls him. And now, as of Secret Wars (2015), the Living Tribunal is dead at the hands of the Beyonders.

Staggeringly, even Darkseid has a Bigger Fish - his own father, Yuga Khan. Thankfully for Darkseid and the universe, all he cares about is learning the truth about the Source, and was trapped, as everybody else is, attempting to penetrate it. However, when he freed himself, he briefly terrorized Apokolips even worse than his son did, and caused Darkseid to attempt to hide. Having learned nothing from his previous attempt, Yuga Khan once again attempted to invade the Source and ended up once again trapped.

In Ultimate Marvel, Gah Lak Tus is one of the biggest threats in that universe. When 616 Galactus arrives through a tear in reality, Gah lak Tus tries to consume him. Upon realizing that Galactus is both a kindred spirit and far more powerful, Gah Lak Tus immediately chooses to merge with him and serve him as his new Heralds.

Judge Dredd: In The Dead Man, Yassa Povey is saved from being eaten by feral grunts by a sinister phantom who scares them off and then pursues him. It later turns out to be the Sisters of Death looking for the Dead Man.

Flashbacks and the universe timeline reveal that the Anteverse kaiju ended up on the receiving end of this — in addition to the Jaegers, they also had to deal with various other human mecha, in addition to all the heroic kaiju in Godzilla's faction. The couple of examples we're shown reveal that the Anteverse bunch didn't stand a chance.

In Game Theory (Fan Fic), Nanoha and Fate are outmatched by one of the Jewel Seed monsters until Zest makes his appearance by killing it in one blow.

Played straight earlier in the film when the frogfish that ate their car is itself eaten by an enormous deep-sea eel. SpongeBob and Patrick's shocked expressions◊ are priceless, to the point of becoming a meme - at least, Patrick did.

In Help! I'm a Fish, the main characters are collecting ingredients to make a potion to turn them back into humans, but run into trouble getting an octopus to squirt ink, as it is much bigger than they are and thus just grabs them. It does eventually squirt ink and swim away, which Fly attributes to their screaming scaring it off, but was really because of the great white shark approaching...

In the "Mickey and the Beanstalk" segment of Fun and Fancy Free, when Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Goofy arrive at Willie the Giant's castle after their house is carried upwards by a beanstalk, a giant dragonfly swoops down and tries to attack the three, but a giant catfish living in Willie's moat jumps up and eats the dragonfly.

The opening credits sequence has a gag where the minions find a boss, that boss is eaten, and the minions want to serve the new creature... until that creature is eaten as well, culminating in the Minions serving a Tyrannosaurus rex.

Done in a more subtle way at the end. Scarlet Overkill makes off with the crown of England... only to be literally frozen in her tracks by a young Felonious Gru, who takes the crown right out of her hands and flies off.

A pretty hilarious example in Finding Dory. When the truck containing the fish falls into the ocean, a small fish gets eaten by a bigger fish, which gets eaten by an even bigger fish. Suddenly, the even bigger fish sneezes and spits out the slightly smaller fish, which in turn spits out the smallest fish.

In Moana, a giant eel-like creature tries to eat Moana when she arrives in the Realm of Monsters, but is itself eaten by a giant plant monster in the nick of time.

The heroes of Jurassic Park are about to get eaten by Velociraptors, but the T. rex shows up, trounces the raptors and saves the day. How it appeared there without anyone noticing, or why the protagonists are now less terrified than they were earlier, remains completely unexplained (there was a barely noticeable hole in the wall it possibly came in through). According to the producers, they were struggling with the ending when they came to the realization that it was really the hero of the movie, and that was when everything fell into place.

In Jurassic Park III, the heroes run from a Spinosaurus straight into the hunting grounds of a T. rex. The Spinosaurus"rescues" the heroes by killing the T. rex, but later begins chasing them again.

In Jurassic World, the Indominus rex proves too much for everything thrown at her until the T. rex knocks her through a fence to the edge of the lagoon and the mosasaur eats her.

The heroine hides from a huge carnivorous lizard in a hollow log, and it tears at the wood to try to get her. Suddenly it stops, and she seems safe... until half the same lizard is seen dangling from the jaws of a ginormous V. rex, which just bit it in two.

Kong himself is a near constant example of this trope in the first half of the movie, as he repeatedly kills a number of animals that are trying to eat Anne Darrow.

In Avatar, Jake faces down a huge, charging rhino-like titanothere. When it stops and retreats, he thinks he's won, only to have to run from what really scared it off: the bigger and nastier-looking carnivorous thanator that was creeping up behind him.

Played straight in Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II. Several members of the JSDF are attacked by Rodan as they try to take an egg from a nest. And, then, Godzilla (who is larger than Rodan) shows up and attacks both the JSDF and Rodan.

Averted in Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack!. Actually Baragon is never attacked by the JDSF, as the Cabinet never actually takes action. In this instance Godzilla is still the Bigger Fish. Baragon goes straight to battle with him. Baragon is the hero, but nowhere near being the bigger fish.

The main dynamic between Godzilla and the MUTOs in Godzilla (2014); Godzilla happens to be the Apex Predator of eons-old radioactive giants, and is pursuing the MUTOs like a predator hunts its prey.

Subverted in The Colour of Magic, where a sinking pirate ship is devoured by a sea monster the size of a village... which shortly washes up dead on an island, as the smaller fish it swallowed along with the ship just happened to be the Luggage. Which kicked it to death from the inside.

In Lake Placid, the protagonists are arguing near the lakeside when a bear appears and attacks them. Then the crocodile unexpectedly pops out of the water and drags the bear in by its leg.

In the beginning of Sharktopus, a beach girl is attacked by a shark while swimming off the shoreline, but the Sharktopus saves her by devouring it.

In Two Serpents Rise, the Caleb woke the King in Red to curb-stomp high priest Temoc when the fanatic tried to sacrifice his best friend.

Flipped on its head by Jonathan Swift:

So nat'ralists observe, a flea Hath smaller fleas that on him prey, And these have smaller fleas that bite 'em, And so proceed ad infinitum.

In Watership Down, after Hazel and Co. are attacked by General Woundwort, a massive dog is led into General Woundwort's forces, who naturally run. General Woundwort himself stays to beat up the dog. It’s worth noting that most of the characters are non-anthropomorphic rabbits, with the exception of Kehaar the seagull.

Well, they wouldn't, would they? Bigger Fish are often Hungrier Fish also.

Subverted in Tuf Voyaging. Wild Card Rica Dawnstar has Tuf outgunned and at her mercy, and refuses to believe him when he tries to point out the T. rex creeping up behind her. It looks like this trope will kick in...then it turns out she was toying with Tuf, and had the Phlebotinium to control the T. rex all along.

In Cain's Last Stand, the schola and PDF are completely swamped by the forces of Chaos. They've fallen back to the secret facility containing the Shadowlight, and are about to be overwhelmed when the Necrons decide to show up. They butcher the forces of Chaos pretty handily, giving Ciaphas Cain note HERO OF THE IMPERIUM!!! and company an opportunity to evacuate.

Earlier in Cain's career in Caves of Ice, some Necrons save his butt again by fending off the Ork attack long enough for them to evacuate, but not before Cain sets the whole facility to explode.

In The Traitor's Hand Cain and Co. have to fight through a horde of well-entrenched Chaos cultists before they complete a ritual that will plunge the planet into the Warp, with no certainty they'll succeed. Cue the sudden appearance of five Chaos Berserkers who worship another Chaos God, and who proceed to slaughter their way through the cultists with abandon, leaving Cain to only follow the trail of destruction to reach their goal.

In Drowning World, characters menaced by a branch-clambering maccaluca are saved when it's snapped up by a vuniwai leaping up from the water.

Mid-Flinx is essentially one long string of Bigger Fish: Flinx's initial human pursuers are killed and supplanted by AAnn pursuers, and both groups of enemies are gradually picked off by one bizarre jungle predator after another.

It's played with in For Love Of Mother-Not when the penestral (roughly speaking, a pike that's 50 feet long) that attacks the bad guys doesn't save the heroes from them (it eats their boat, but the real villains has just escaped onto a flyer). The fisherwoman escorting Flinx scoffs at its size, pointing out that it wasn't terribly big for a penestral, and that the penestral is only a mid-range predator anyway. She offers to take Flinx fishing for oboweir sometime, and when he asks the inevitable "What's an oboweir?", her reply is "A fish that eats penestral."

In Casino Royale (book and movie), Bond is rescued from Le Chiffre when Le Chiffre's own superiors (SMERSH or QUANTUM, depending on the source) assassinate him.

Bond himself is the Bigger Fish in The Spy Who Loved Me (the original novel onlynote Ian Fleming was very dissatisfied with this novel and only gave permission for the title to be used when he sold the film rights. Thus, the film has very little similarity to the novel.) when, while checking into a hotel, he walks in on two small-time mobsters who are attempting to rape Viv Michel.

A couple of times in The Dresden Files. In Proven Guilty, Harry has just escaped from where Madrigal Raith and his lackey have been holding him hostage and they've started fighting... Only for the bad guys to end up running away as fast as possible when the book's actual Big Bad shows up. Small Favor also has a sequence where Harry's trying to get away from a Fallen Angel, only for fairy assassin Eldest Brother Gruff to show up and take out the guy without even trying.

Used in Nightingale's Lament, when a limo Taylor is riding in is about to be attacked by a predator camouflaged as another car. Before it can do any damage, the critter is picked up and carried off by something HUGE with talons and wings. Possibly a subversion, as the limo might've been able to hold off the car-mimicking monster with its built-in defenses.

In the 11th book of A Series of Unfortunate Events, the Baudelaire orphans are in a submarine which is being attacked by the main villain. However, when a mysterious question mark appears on the radar, everyone is scared, including the attackers. To make matters worse/better, the author never says just what the question mark was.

Once he tried to feed all the animals in all the world in one day, but when the food was ready an Animal came out of the deep sea and ate it up in three mouthfuls. Suleiman-bin-Daoud was very surprised and said, "O Animal, who are you?" And the Animal said, "O King, live for ever! I am the smallest of thirty thousand brothers, and our home is at the bottom of the sea. We heard that you were going to feed all the animals in all the world, and my brothers sent me to ask when dinner would be ready."

The Empire plays this role at the end of Shadows of the Empire, just as it looks like the rebels are about to be obliterated by Xizor's forces.

In Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Harry and Hermione are surrounded by an angry mob of centaurs. Just as the situation is looking rather grim, a giant shows up, scattering the herd and chasing them into the forest. Hermione, characteristically, is worried about the centaurs. It's worth noting that these centaurs, in turn, had gotten rid of Delores Umbridge, the Faux Affably Evil Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, and the centaurs were angry BECAUSE Hermione had manipulated them into getting rid of Umbridge.

In Peter Benchley's "Beast", the titular giant squid is moments from finishing the remaining characters when it is attacked, killed, and presumably eaten by an equally massive sperm whale.

In 100 Great Science Fiction Short Short Stories, there's a story by Martin Gardner called "Thang," in which the titular being started eating the solar system but was interrupted by an even larger being scooping him up and swallowing him. "For there are other gods than Thang."

In the third book of Robin Hobb's Liveship Traders trilogy, Bingtown, the town in which much of the action takes place, is being completely overrun by the Chalcedonians... when the last of the ancient race of dragons wakes from her unexpectedly lengthy slumber, and goes looking in Bingtown for those responsible for her awakening. The Chalcedonians fire arrows at her in terror, and in response, she effortlessly kills them all.

Steelheart opens with an Epic named Deathpoint robbing a bank and generally wreaking havoc. What with his ability to kill people by pointing at them, he seems an extremely formidable guy. Then Steelheart (who is basically an evil version of Superman, except maybe even more powerful) shows up, and suddenly Deathpoint doesn't look so scary after all...

In Heroes Die, Hari spends much of the book being harassed by Administrator Kollberg. At the end, he is arrested by the Social Police.

The Crusaders has the Earth almost destroyed by the first arc's villain, Dr. Anarchy, who was legitimately a big deal. Then, the Brutikai warrior, Glorien, walks in and recruits him.

Darkstar shows up in Volume Two, and is powerful enough to annihilate Mind Master and Starbolt in combat, without resting between the fights, something even Glorien couldn't pull off.

Live-Action TV

Lost season 4 is all over this trope. One group of Losties hides from the freighties in the Others' Barracks. Later, a group cornered in a house are able to leave because the smoke monster (the series' original antagonist) attacks the bad guys. In the finale, when the Others showed up, fans at TWoP commented that they felt like the cavalry had arrived, quite a sharp contrast to the Others' first appearance in "Exodus Part 2".

One of the animation segues in an episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus has a section involving people being squashed on the streets by "killer cars", which were destroyed by a gigantic building-swallowing Siamese Cat, which was then killed by a several-hundred-foot-tall disembodied hand... and then it transitions into something else completely different.

Bored to Death: Our protagonist is saved from a scary murderous thug by driving into the back of a police car. While high.

The MST3k episode King Dinosaur features two astronauts trapped in a cave by a Tyrannosaurus rex that is actually an iguana. The arrival of a baby alligator with a fin glued on its back, and the ensuing "dinosaur" battle, allows them to make their getaway.

In "The Little People," an episode of The Twilight Zone, spaceman Peter Craig discovers a race of ant-size people and uses his size to proclaim himself their god threatening to kill them all unless they obey, yet he still constantly terrorizes them anyways...until two spacemen who are giants even to him show up.

On Justified Boyd Crowder has just been 'arrested' by a mob hitman pretending to be a sheriff's deputy and is about to be taken to his death. US Marshall Raylan Givens wants to talk to Boyd about a related matter and is not amused when the 'deputy' gives him lip. The hitman draws his gun and Raylan shoots him dead. Later in the episode Boyd uses Summon Bigger Fish and asks the Detroit mob to help him deal with some corrupt local businessmen who made him An Offer You Can't Refuse. Later he notes that there are only two fish bigger than the Detroit mob: God and Uncle Sam. If Boyd gets on the bad side of the Detroit Don Theo Tonnin, he is screwed unless Raylan and the Marshalls take out Theo for him.

In Person of Interest, whenever there's a story arc about a villain containing elements of conspiracy, there seems to almost always be a more powerful, more mysterious bad guy behind them.

The episode Matsya Nyayanote law of the fishes is all about this concept in which an armored car guard tries to rob his own shipment before running afoul of HR.

In Doctor Who, the "Predator of the Daleks" is one of the names for the Doctor, given to him by the Daleks themselves.

From the episode "Army of Ghosts", an army of several thousand Cybermen has just managed to conquer Earth. Then a spaceship stored in Torchwood's basement opens up, and out come four Daleks. A large part of the next episode has the Daleks effortlessly killing the Cybermen.

The rings of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are the key to defeating Lucifer. Three of them have to be taken by force, but Death voluntarily gives them his because he considers it an insult to be bound by "a bratty child throwing a temper tantrum" (Yes, that's actually how he describes Satan.)

There's also the scene in "Hammer of the Gods" where an entire roomful of pagan gods is effortlessly slaughtered by Lucifer.

Amara, a.k.a. The Darkness, is the biggest fish in the series so far. She effortlessly slaps around everyone who goes after her, including Lucifer, and even God himself acknowledges he can't beat her on his own.

Community: In "Horror Fiction In Seven Spooky Steps", Annie tells a story about a vampire version of Jeff getting eaten by a werewolf version of herself.

For the first three seasons of Parks and Recreation, Librarian "Tammy Two" (Ron Swanson's second ex-wife-named-Tammy) is the clear Big Bad of the series. Then at the end of season three, the cast are informed that "Tammy One" is on the scene. Tammy Two immediately flees in terror.

The possibility of this was Foreshadowed in the episode "Unity", where the crew encounter a powerless Borg cube. B'Elanna suggests the cube was either damaged by an "electro-kinetic storm" or someone more powerful than them. Everyone is visibly unnerved by the possibility of that.

Music

I know an old lady who swallowed a fly... and an increasing sequence of critters each swallowed to catch the previous one.

Pink Floyd's "The Wall": When we grew up and went to school / There were certain teachers who would / Hurt the children in any way they could ... But in the town, it was well known / When they got home at night, their fat and Psychopathic wives would thrash them / Within inches of their lives.

Radio

Thomas from Old Harry's Game was a murder-rapist in life, and was able to completely get away with it until he went to Hell and was reduced to a punching bag for Satan.

Sir Gregory Pitkin in The Men from the Ministry is an archetypal Bad Boss of General Assistance Department, but his own superior Lord Stilton sometimes plays this role saving (mostly unknowingly) the staff of Department from Sir Gregory's wrath.

In Sentinels of the Multiverse, the Environment deck can lead to various critters finishing off the supervillain you're fighting. For example, if you can get the villain down to 1-2HP, they can be considered the "target with the lowest HP" for the Chupacabra in the Final Wasteland or the Raptor Packs in Insula Primalis. Chomp.

Near the end of Outlast, Chris Walker, who up to that point has been the recurring/main antagonist of the game, as well as being a hulking behemoth of a man, is just about to deliver the finishing blow to the protagonist, Miles Upshur, before he is grabbed by the Walrider, which proceeds to throw him around the room like a ragdoll, finally shredding him to bits in a vent grate.

While GordonFreeman doesn't exactly need the help, there are numerous places in the Half-Life series where members of different factions fight and kill each other, effectively clearing Freeman's path (Marines and Xen aliens in Half-Life, Combine, Antlions and Headcrab Zombies in Half-Life 2 and its Episodes). Closer to the trope, this leads to at least two instances where a rampaging Antlion Guard slaughters a squad of Combine soldiers.

This is essentially what happened between Half-Life 1 and 2. At some point after or during the Alien Invasion by Xen forces, a different alien invasion by the Combine happened. They curb-stomped both Earth and Xen forces easily, and took over the planet.

This trope is the major point of Feeding Frenzy. Eat small fish, become large fish, and avoid the even larger fish while doing that. Most levels have non-edible fish (which means, they eat you), or something else capable of killing you (mines or birds, or both!) but in several levels you get to be top dog of the seas.

No matter what fish you are in Odell Down Under, there is always something that can eat you. Even the largest fish, the great white shark, can still be eaten... by another great white shark.

In AdventureQuest when you do the "Big Trouble in Little Granemor" quest you're attacked by a Giant Hungry Zombie after fighting off some vampires. The zombie makes about one attack before a Ribber randomly comes up and drags it away (with its mouth).

Spore features this trope quite prominently, particularly in the Cell Stage. If you happen to be in the middle of being attacked by a large organism, once in a while a larger creature comes along and scares off or eats your attacker.

It can happen in-game, too: dragons can randomly attack while the player is fighting off weaker enemies.

The Dragonborn themself is one. According to lore, Akatosh bestowed upon mortals the gift of Dragons-blood so that they may serve as guardians of mankind and as natural predators to Dragonkind. Indeed, part of what makes the Dragonborn so greatly feared is their ability to simply show up in the middle of a Dragon-attack, tear them apart, devour their very soul... and then promptly go on their way. There's a reason the Dragonborn is referred to in-universe as "The One They Fear".

Musashi Samurai Legend had a literal example with the Crimson Gorger. After the fight, it's about to eat Musashi, it then gets eaten by the Great Crimson Gorger, who then proceeds to continue the chase and therefore the boss fight.

BioShock uses this trope early on to introduce the Little Sister and Big Daddies. After injecting himself with the Electro Bolt plasmid, Jack is left nearly unconscious as two splicers poke his body, searching for Adam. They are scared off by the approaching footsteps of a big daddy.

Later on, Jack witnesses a scene where a splicer tries to harvest a Little Sister that's supposedly all alone, only for her scream to alert a Big Daddy that proceeds to beat the ever-loving crud out of the unlucky splicer.

In Aria of Sorrow, when you enter one boss fight room, a large number of smaller bats immediately form into a giant bat… Which then gets crushed by a giant hand belonging to Balore, the boss you actually end up fighting.

In Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance where the Talos (the massive suit of armor that chases you in the beginning of the game) crushes a smaller Living Armor that is set up to be the boss.

Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines: You play as a badass vampire. You have cool powers, you're resistant to gunfire, and you have incredible strength and speed. Muggles pose little to no challenge at all. Werewolves, on the other hand, are an entirely different story. There will be one instance in the game where you have to face one, and all you can do is run away. RUN. Or lure up to the observatory and crush it between the doors.

Another scene has her show up and get into a fight with an angry mother Triceratops that's trying to kill them, and the protagonists only make it through because, for the most part, the two dinosaurs are more interested in killing each other.

In the Fallout: New Vegas DLC, Lonesome Road, a Deathclaw can be seen running in a cave. When you follow it you see its corpse and what follows is probably the first encounter with the Tunnelers, reptilian humanoids that hit as hard as Deathclaws, attack in packs, travel underground, and breed like rabbits.

In Fallout 4, there's a ruined town that you can find remnants of a Raider encampment in. They were wiped out when Super Mutants moved in. By the time you get there, the town is full of dead Super Mutants and live Deathclaws.

In Chapter 6 of Xenoblade Chronicles X, the party have just finished a fairly tough boss fight with a Tainted Sphinx when three more show up. Then the colossal Telethia swoops in and tosses the beasts around like ragdolls before flying away. The characters are left wondering whether it intended to save them or toy with them.

Medieval II: Total War: No matter how powerful you think you are, the Mongols and later the Timurids will cream you and all your big Europe-bestriding armies.

In Pokémon, Gyarados have a well-deserved reputation as terrifying, powerful and destructive monsters, but even they flee from Wishiwashi's powerful School Form, called the Demon of the Seas... and even then, Wailords have been known to devour entire schools of Wishiwashi whole.

In the second The Force Unleashed, upon entering the arena on Cato Neimoidia, a cutscene plays out in which a huge gate opens to reveal a rancor. The rancor only takes a few steps forward before an absolutely enormous arm reaches out from below the arena and grabs the beast, dragging it down below. Then you're introduced to the Gorog.

The Reaper Leviathan of Subnautica is a fearsome, best avoided beast. But as the game goes on, the once seemingly apex predator is revealed to be both the smallest of the Leviathan class beasts and food for the other members of the class.

Web Original

In the KateModern episode "Answers", Michelle Clore orders her Shadow to carry off Lauren. As he is doing so, Terrence arrives and beats the Shadow in the face repeatedly with a golf club, apparently just for the hell of it. Lauren escapes.

In "Love on the 436", Terrence advances on the K-Team, only to get beaten up by the Shadow.

Ask That Guy with the Glasses: Ask That Guy is a thoroughly depraved, devil-worshipping murder-rapist who prides himself on answering every question in the most disturbing possible way. In Episode 44, he gives Bennett the Sage the chance to answer some questions for him, which ends with Ask That Guy lying on the floor in the fetal position as Sage rapes him.

Atop the Fourth Wall feature Lord Vyce, an interdimensional conqueror who has been slowly accumulating alternate realities into his multiversal empire. It later turns out that Vyce was a Well-Intentioned Extremist who was conquering realities specifically to protect them from something called the Entity. Which means that since Vyce was the only one who could go toe-to-toe with the Entity in a physical battle, when Linkara takes Vyce out, he attracts the Entity's attention...

In a much earlier and more humorous example, Torg is about to be kissed by the ugliest woman in the world, but she is suddenly eaten by the alien that followed him from another dimension. She (the alien this time) seems about to eat him too, but he's still relieved.

In thisTerminal Lance strip, a bunch of lower-level enlisted personnel get to enjoy seeing their Gunnery Sergeant being chewed out by a more senior NCOnote Non-Commissioned Officer instead of being the one giving the chewing-out to the lower-level enlisted. The title for that page is, to make the point of the strip obvious, "The Bigger Fish".

Scurry: Wix makes a run for the forest, because he knows the cats won't follow him in. Titan decides he hates Wix more than he fears the forest and chases him in. Titan is immediately killed and eaten by the wolves that live in the forest.

In one episode of Black Dynamite the titular hero is on an island lost to time similar to King Kong's when he's attacked by a giant white wolf. He pulls his weapon but waits until the wolf is eaten by a bigger raptor. Then waits for the raptor to be eaten by a giant spider before finally taking said spider down with a single bullet. Now THAT is how you conserve ammo.

In the fourth episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender, Aang stops at Kyoshi Island to ride the elephant koi, koi-like fish at least 15 metres long. Later, we meet the Unagi, the sea serpent that eats them.

In the first episode of the third season, a giant serpent attacks the ship of the group, and then goes after the enemy ship that was attacking them, after a Tempting Fate phrase by Sokka.

In several classic Warner Bros. & MGM cartoons, one throwaway gag would be for a fish to eat something, then a bigger fish would eat that fish, then a bigger fish would eat that fish, then a punch line to the bit. Parodied on The Simpsons, where the 3-eyed fish is eaten by a 6-eyed fish, which is then eaten by a 9-eyed fish. Which is then eaten by a swimming Homer. Parodied even earlier by Felix the Cat in "Neptune Nonsense": When the goldfish Felix was trying to catch has this happen to it, Felix manages to free the goldfish, only for it to turn around and eat all four fish that ate it. Felix quickly decides to find another fish.

The Tex Avery classic King Size Canary has an alley cat, bulldog, mouse, and canary all squaring off against each other, and thanks to a bottle of miracle-growth tonic, they all take turns being the bigger fish.

In the Family Guy episode "Lois Kills Stewie", Lois describes via flashback that she took a job at a fat camp. At one point she has to take one of the campers out of another camper's mouth ('cause he's fat see, so he'd want to eat whatever he could), and then she has to pull another camper out of the mouth of the camper she'd just rescued.

There's always the classic gag from Looney Tunes, in which Granny picks up the dog and hits it until it spits out Sylvester, only to then pick up Sylvester and hit him until he spits out Tweety.

Wild Kratts: This happens no fewer than two times in quick succession in an almost Xanatos-like way. A giant squid and a mama sperm whale are battling it out over the baby sperm whale, when a net comes out of nowhere and takes Mama out of the fight. So Big Daddy Sperm Whale shows up and promptly makes calamari of the squid. Enter colossal squid.

Played with in an episode of The Angry Beavers where Norbert is admiring a rare fish in the river where their dam is. The fish is promptly eaten by a larger fish, which is eaten by another. This continues until the largest fish is eaten by a fish that was even smaller than the first one. Then that one is eaten by a orca whale. That episode centered all around the orca/killer whale Daggit brought to their pond after seeing it perform at a water theme park. It eventually started eating everything and everyONE, including the beavers. They were saved by a T-rex that happens to eat it... and this one too was brought home by Daggit, ready to eat them in the whale's place.

The Transformers episode "Child's Play" begins In Medias Res as the Decepticons capture a bunch of humans and treat them like toys before the Autobots arrive to save the day. Then, both sides end up on a planet where the inhabitants are so huge that Transformers are like toys to them.

At the end of the Wander over Yonder episode "The Egg", a dragon-like creature tries to eat the newborn Bug-monster . . . until its much larger mother scares him off.

Spoofed in the Rick and Morty episode "Anatomy Park", where Morty and Annie are rescued from a rampaging Hepatitis A when a larger Hepatitis C snatches it in its jaws; it then gives them both a friendly thumbs-up before going on its way. The pair is somewhat confused as to why it saved them, and Annie theorizes that Hepatitis C is just a really swell virus.

One amusing sequence in Wakfu has the girls falling into a swamp and being subjected to this repeatedly. First they run from a huge monster. Then they and the monster start running in the opposite direction from a bigger feline monster. Then all of them start running from an even bigger dinosaur. The dinosaur is puzzled when its prey suddenly run past it...only to get crushed underfoot by a much bigger dinosaur.

There is a Permian fossil of a shark that ate an amphibian that had eaten a fish.

In 2009 off the eastern seaboard of Australia, a three metre (ten feet) great white shark was found entangled in shark nets. The nets hadn't killed the shark, in fact, the shark had been bitten clean in half by something twice as large. Only in Australia, folks.

If you're wondering what could have done that: Another Great White, a Saltwater Crocodile, or an Orca.

Point of order: The shark was still alive when it was hauled out of the water. Great whites are amazingly tough to survive a wound like that.

Speaking of Orcas, they are almost the perfect example of this trope in real life. Nigh-universally feared by people, the mighty great white shark is little more than prey for the even bigger and stronger Orca. In fact, when scientists tagged a group of great whites around the Southern California coastline in 2000, they all vanished very quickly after a local pod of Orcas decided to snack on them. One of the great whites was satellite-tracked, and was found to have pretty much immediately high-tailed it to Hawaii, over two thousand miles distant.

In an inversion, it's hypothesized that early Orcas drove the Megalodon, the infamous monster shark, into extinction. Being half the size of Megalodon and pack hunters they would have been competing for the same prey (baleen whales and large fish) and even possibly hunting the sharks themselves.

Another animal that's often considered to be a terrifying sea monster are Giant Squids, but even they're preyed on by the largest predator, living or extinct, the Sperm Whale. The only animals larger then it are the filter feeding baleen whales.

Proponents of globalization and similar trends point to this as a way to ensure world peace. The bigger fish in this case is economics. If two or more countries are intimately tied together economically, then they can't attack each other because even the victor would be greatly damaged by the economic repercussions. This was one of the driving forces behind the founding of the European Union and is cited as a major (if not predominant) reason why war between China and the United States is almost impossible in the current economic climate — which is one reason China is working hard to find other markets for its products so it has more options in its foreign policy, especially when it comes to such hot topics as Taiwan. Whether this will work in practice, only time will tell; after all this same theory was applied to Europe between roughly 1870 and 1914. Didn't work out so well.

War between Canada, the United States, and Mexico was once a likely scenario and became reality in the War of 1812 and the Mexican-American War of 1848. Nowadays, war between the three countries is almost unthinkable, mainly because large percentages of their imports and exports circulate among each other-in Canada and Mexico's cases, the overwhelming majority of exports go to the US. Only 21% of the US's exports go to Canada and Mexico, but that's still 5 times more than goes to China.

Starting in the 1st century and continuing until the 5th, the Roman Empire was almost constantly being invaded by Germanic tribes with names like the Vandals, the Goths and the Alans. It turned out that all of these barbarians, who inspired fear and loathing in the Roman mind, were in fact fleeing from their version of big, scary barbarians: the Huns.

In the 1220s and 1230s, Hungary had a dire problem with a nomad incursion, the Cumans. Turned out the Cumans were themselves fleeing even bigger fish: the Mongols.

In the 260s BC, a group of mercenaries called the Mamertines holed themselves up in the Sicilian city of Messana, having seriously pissed off Carthage, the closest thing that the Mediterranean had to a superpower at the time. The Mamertines asked an up-and-coming Italian city state called Rome for help. Cue twenty years of the Romans proving they are the bigger fish in that particular pond, and Carthage was forever after relegated to "slightly smaller fish."

Community

Tropes HQ

TVTropes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from thestaff@tvtropes.org. Privacy Policy